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I’m now the proud owner of a modded Xbox running XBox Media Center. Thats right — I think its the first gaming console that I’ve ever owned, and I’ve modified it to do my bidding and it doesn’t involve too much gaming.

It was an interesting project, as I really wanted to homebrew or do on cheap as much stuff as possible.

• I used these instructions from Lifehacker to actually mod the Xbox as a guide.
• However, those instructions required an “action replay” device, which I hacked together from a USB cable (I snipped up a USB hub and a dead Xbox controller) (make your own Action Replay)
• In addition, Action Replay didn’t recognize the first few USB keys I tried (USB device failed to enumerate error), so I ended up using Xebian linux distro on a disc to transfer the Xbox gamesaves onto the USB key.
• And lastly (or, I suppose, firstly), I actually joined the 21st century and added WiFi to the house. Thats not particularly interesting, but to get the Xbox hooked up to the Wifi network, you can buy an $80-$100 dongle for the Xbox, or you can plug it into a homebrewed Wifi access point (or client bridge). Guess which one I did? I bought a cheap router off Craigslist and added the DD-WRT firmware to it to create the client bridge.

Total cost: $120 - Xbox $80, router $40, and slight damage to my USB splitter (I couldn’t bear to pay $20 for a cable that I was going to cut up.) Better deals can be had on the Xbox but its nice knowing that the console works well prior to getting it (makes one less thing to troubleshoot really). I may have to reimburse somebody for the USB key as well, as I’d kinda like to keep it…(I tried four different USB keys before getting one that worked, however, I think the first one could have been made to work with a little more persistence…)

If we like how it works, we may get a DVD remote to go with the Xbox and maybe even another Xbox, who knows. The practical upshot is that we’ve got a little media centre that can grab files off the network and display them nicely. And I’ve learned a thing or three…

Update:

Further notes for those that find this blog post — Gina’s article from Lifehacker suggests that you do a backup, but the steps that she describes don’t seem to backup the EEPROM.bin which might be required if you want to switch out the Xbox hard drive (another project for another time?). I used the EvoX backup to create a backup which seems to ahve created the appropriate file. We’ll only know when I try to use the eeprom.bin though I suppose.

If you’re making your own Action Replay device, I think that a flashing screen can be caused both by loose wires in your Action Replay device OR an incompatible USB key.

I also had an issue with only a “Delete” option showing when I looked at the USB key that actually worked — I think this was an issue with me knowing the actual user interface, as you kind of have to toggle to the right to actually select the gamesave. (Although some have reported that only a delete option shows when the gamesave is corrupted, this could also occur.)

Update update: I used the instructions here for XBMC as a dashboard and I temporarily bricked my Xbox, not recoverable with Frosty’s Rescue disc (maybe I didn’t read the instructions correctly). Think it might be because I used an older installer which put the dashboard somewhere else. Investigating (carefully!)